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On December 17, at the closure of the Moscow Christmas antiquarian fair, gallery of Leonid Shishkin held an auction in The Central House of Artist, during which participants of the fair and the exhibiting project «Half a century of Soviet art» presented their collections.

An exhibition titled «Trip to Central Asia, 1920–1990» was warmly welcomed by the public, which secured the successful auctioning of the collection, though there was no rush about the auctioned lots, no desperate bidding.

The painting titled «Three Oak» (1930-1940) that was produced by a member of Association of Painters of Revolutionary Russia («биит») Alexei Solodkov was sold under established estimate of $14.000–16.000, the actual price of the painting comprised $13.000. As Leonid Shishkin, the director of the gallery, told former owners of the painting tried to sell it as authentic to the XIX century.

They rubbed off the signature of the artist, and theoretically could succeed in the attempt, as members of Association of Painters of Revolutionary Russia were actually following traditions of Russian realistic painting of the XIX century. But the trick didn’t work. The painting was returned to the heirs of the artist, who put it on the auction.

Unexpected interest caused works of smaller size. Small size landscape painted by Alexander Samohvalov «Pine tree on Savkina Mountain. Pushkinskie Mountains» was sold for $7.500. Paintings by Constantine Vaylov «Pilot Safronov. Sketch» and «fishermen’s boats. View from the deck» were sold for $10.000 each (while they both were estimated at $6.000 – 8.000).